During the 4th quarter, 9th grade students of African American history created
30-second commercials. This project was successful in a variety of ways:

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 The fundamental concepts in physics often pose major challenges to students' preformed notions of how the world works, and as such require approaches that require them to confront these notions head on. Given that much of high school physics involves the study of force and motion, ideas that students can experience daily and have a wealth of personal knowledge to draw upon already, classroom projects can be built around creating discrepant events that challenge students to think about what they are experiencing in a new way.

During the second quarter, students were given the charge of running their own cell phone company.  Their task was to compete with another company for customers within a specific age market.  Students’ advertising tactics were restricted to using those of a designated cell phone company such as Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile.  Using their knowledge of their company and their competitors, students created a presentation for potential customers.  The mathematical skills associated with benchmark were solving and graphing linear equations.  Click here to view a group's sample presentation.  Also, attached is a copy of this same group's graph, graph analysis, brochure, and t

While learning about biological taxonomy, our 9th grade bio/chem students took a closer look at taxonomic similiarites and differences between the earthworm and human.  Students then dissected the earthworm and researched some of the worm's body systems.  The final aspect of this project was to prepare and present a digital portfolio comparing the taxonomy and anatomy of the human to that of the earthworm.

I've attached the student guide, teacher unit plan, and a sample of student work.

One of the units that was the most engaging for me to teach this year connected themes from the book Night by Elie Weasel to the modern day prison crisis in the United States. Night is an incredibly powerful book that draws in readers and raises many universal issues. I find that the book lends itself to thoughtful class discussions and creative expression. Of particular interest were readings and discussions about indoctrination in Nazi Germany and connections to examples of torture sanctioned by the US government.

For the second quarter benchmark in Pre-Calculus, students tied together concepts involving transformations and trigonometric functions, and applied those principles in order to model real world data. Students collected data and generated sinusoidal functions modeling the average temperature and sunset times for one major US city. As a final product, students generated a detailed process guide explaining the process that they engaged in while generating their model functions. Their guide had to include graphical representations of their functions as well as their data points, and was meant to clearly explain their problem solving process.

During our study of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and the Grade 11 essential question, "What the relationship between the self and a changing world?" we wanted our students to consider how they may have changed since entering high school. As such, each G11 student was paired with a new G9 student. The G11s were charged with interviewing their underclassmen for a story that would prove interesting to a larger audience.

The project grew out of many discussions with returning SLA students who admitted not having a chance to get to know the new 9th graders. Academically, it was aimed at having students see how truth was formed in O'Brien's text and where the gray line was for their own interviews.

Students really enjoyed the anatomy project that compared earthworms (L. terrestris) and humans (H. sapiens). Some highlights of the plan included dissection, identification and comparison of organ systems, and video portfolios. See below for the sample student portfolios (note: the portfolios were sometimes a bit - - - unique!).

Student Portfolios:

This unit focused on inductive and deductive reasoning.  Students
were answering delving in to logical arguments and how to form them. 
This unit was a great introduction to writing formal proofs by starting
with logic puzzles and games.  Students completed a benchmark project
to complete this unit.  Their projects included writing 3 types of
puzzles, a color-square puzzle, a crossword puzzle and a puzzle of
their choice.  Then the students exchanged puzzles and solved their
partner's puzzles.  The student who was solving the puzzles had to use
syllogisms and conditional statements to prove the solution.  Their
written proofs were submitted with their puzzles in a portfolio format.

This unit was designed to introduce students to a classic of American literature, and take a close look at both the themes ane the composition of that book. Students spent time learning about the setting and era of The Great Gatsby, as well as making connections to their History unit on The American Dream. The focus then shifted F. Scott's Fitzgerald's writing of the book, where students did some close analysis of some aspect of his composition, as well as read letters between Fitzgerald and his editor about the draft and improvement of the original manuscript. Students then applied the lessons about fiction writing to their own creative writing project, a quarterly benchmark which included mini-lessons on different aspects of fiction and extensive peer editing.

In Spanish 4 we examined the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and discussed the importance of KNOWING our rights (we can't defend our rights if we don't know what they are!). We then read excerpts from Rigoberta Menchu's book, "me llamo rigoberta menchú y asi me nació la conciencia" to see how she used Spanish as a tool to fight for the rights of Guatemala's indigenous peoples.

For more information about SLA, download the SLA Family Night Guide -- (PDF Format)

The attachments listed here lead you to my Dred Scott Benchmark project for my 9th grade African-American History class. One of my aims at SLA is to focus on & quot;case studies & quot; as a way of delving into history. (These don't have to be actual court cases, instead they are key access points where students have to understand the events that led up to the critical moment and the consequences/implications of what happened.

By the end of the year, I was feeling reasonably secure in my ability to craft a unit plan that engaged the students and pushed them to engage the world around them. The unit plan found here and subequent project descriptions and student work provided me with the first true inkling of what was possible. It led the way for the Othello Unit Plan and the World Change Unit Plan in 10th and the Hamlet and Memoir Unit Plans in 9th. Overall, I'm pleased with how it turned out, but want to add more definition to the benchmark description so that the students feel the guidance they need. I'd also differentiate between the audio and written performance expectations at the outset. Eventually, that happened.

For the last Geometry project of the year, students took on the role of writers of the "Do-It-Yourself" booklet series. This time, their challenge is to teach interested minds how to find the heights of tall objects that are hard to measure directly using the geometric concepts of similarity and trigonometry. The project required them to synthesize the methods and concepts they learned in class, data gathered from a series of physical surveying on the field, and several calculations in order to determine the unknown indirectly. It also demanded them to communicate their findings and understanding of mathematical ideas in as thorough a manner as possible, such that the final products (the DIY booklets) would be accessible to novice geometers.

Of all the projects they have done this year, this was one in which students were the most invested and engaged, perhaps due to the hands-on aspects of it and the straightforward nature of the calculations involved. The biggest challenge for many of the students had to do with executing the surveying procedures in accurate and precise manners, as well as with explaining geometric ideas and the logic behind them clearly and correctly.

The project handout and a few exemplary booklets are attached. 

As part of 9th-grade students' investigation in to "integrationism" and "separatism" within African American history, students were asked to create a 30-second commerical about topics from 1865-present. Click on the link below for examples of students' work:

30-Sec Commercial: MLK's "I have a Dream..."

30-Sec Commercial: Emmett Till

30-Sec Commercial: Obama

For more detailed descriptions of the research and writing process, see "Research/Essay Process" and "30-Second Commerical" notes below.

Research/Essay Process

1. Class brainstorm on African American history topics, 1865-present
2. Individual brainstorm on students' "top 10" list with 3 "What I know..." and 3 "What I want to know..." questions
3. Extended research with identification of three APA-style citations for the top 3 of top 10 topics
4. Identification of supporting images
5. Coaching for a thesis statement and corresponding outline
6. Peer and teacher editing of rough and final essay drafts

30-Second Commercial_Student Guide:

Once students devloped a liteal understanding of an aspect of African American history, they then began to work on the 30-second commerical. Below is an outline of the student guide:

For this assignment, you will take on the role of a video editor/production artist within a publicity firm. Your assignment is to create a 30-second commercial that advances the thesis statement of a much larger and more extensive position paper of the individual or organization who has hired your company. The commerical project outline is based on the thesis statement, research and arguments within the history essay. Although you will be using 21st century tools, you will be appealing to the audience of the time in which your topic ocurred.

In order to complete the project, you will have to present an outline of your commercial to classmates (and teacher) for review. You will upload an MS-word based outline of their 30 second commercial on Moodle and in Print.

The outline should include the following:

1. Name and your topic
2. Thesis statement
3. 6-8 supporting slides (for about 3-5 seconds each); the slides may take on the following format, or you can modify them as needed:
   1. Introduction phrase
   2. image
   3. supporting phrase
   4. image
   5. supporting phrase
   6. image
   7. concluding phrase (and contact info).
4. Production notes:
   1. sources for images, voice-over, sound files (if any)
   2. benefits of particular arrangement of texts/words

This outline will be used to guide the PowerPoint, Keynote, or other media* format commercial.

* If you elect to use another media format, please be sure that your colleagues (students, teacher) have the software to open and read it.

As the nice weather was approaching and I overheard students started discussing the latest fad crash diet for whatever reason, I couldn't think of a better time to talk about healthy nutrition and exercise in Spanish class! Before we even started the unit, students blogged for five days about what they ate, how many minutes of exercise and how many hours of sleep they had each night. (My initial plan was to have pen pals from Spain simultaneously blog about their diet, exercise and sleep patterns and then have the two groups of students do a cross-cultural comparison of each others' habits; however, it did not work out and this component of the project was left out.) After talking about using the subjunctive tense, students went back to each others' blogs and reflected on their own habits and make reccomendations for each other.

For the final project, the students turned into personal trainers and made five-day meals plans complete with exercise reccommendations for another student.  The first attachement is an explanation of the project and the final two attachments are examples of student work.

In 10th grade English students read Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston. As we completed the book we began an inquiry of language in our lives. During this inquiry the main question we were investigating was "What are the relationships between language, power, and culture?" To investigate this question we analyzed the language in Their Eyes and then we read several different essays that relate to issues of language, identity, and power. For a complete list of the essays click here.

Students were then given the Language Autobiography assignment:

Through the 9th grade study of The Odyssey, we explored how the story was crafted to teach its audience basic lessons of the time, (i.e. "How to be a real man."  "The importance of loyalty in upholding social order.")   Further, we tracked and analyzed how archetypes were used within the story.  From this study, we looked to the modern version of this lesson-based, archetype-heavy story, the Fairy Tale.  Students were then asked to create an illustrated fairy tale story book.  Lastly, they had to reflect on their experiences developed through their own authorship, and then connect those experiences to a deeper understanding of Homer and The Odyssey.

This was a project wherein students took a chemical from the CDC Third Report on chemical exposure and studied the chemical, why we use it, what are it's effects, etc...  Then many students created a Public Service Announcement alerting the public to harm they may be facing.  This was very interesting because some of the students were looking at phthalates and bisphenol-A before there was a huge public outcry this past Spring.  They liked the fact that something they were studying and knew about then later became big news.

 Some of the more exemplary projects include one on PAH's, Mercury, Formaldehyde, Cobalt, and Cadmium but you can see all of them here and here.

Attached are the UbD, Student Guide, and Rubric.

For our 10th grade Q1 benchmark, our students gathered soil and water samples from a proposed construction site next the Schuykill river near SLA. We then tested these samples for the presence of various chemicals. The class' lab data was shared electronically, and students wrote an environmental impact study paper based on this data. Each student used the data to support their recommendation as to whether the construction should proceed as planned.

During the fourth quarter, I taught a unit on Linear Inequalities and solving systems of equations. The benchmark for the fourth quarter tested students’ abilities to think critically and to make use of the skills that they have learned during this unit in order to solve a simple "Trail Mix" problem.
Reflecting back on this project, I feel that this project assessed students’ abilities to use linear inequalities and equations in order to solve the trail mix problem. I liked the framework of the project because it forced students to revisit and examine some of their previous work so that they could fully explain the meaning of their calculations and the graph that they constructed.

I have attached a copy of the project tasks and descriptions for the Trail Mix Project.

Here is a link to a example student work. A hard copy is also attached.

Here is a link to another example of student work . A hard copy is also attached.